Establishing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EEAT) has become a central focus for B2B marketers looking to improve their search visibility and build credibility with their target audience. However, misconceptions and ineffective tactics, particularly around author authority, often hinder progress and limit success.

Surface-level approaches, such as relying solely on author bios, fail to provide the depth and corroboration needed to establish genuine expertise in the eyes of both search engines and discerning B2B audiences.

As a result, marketers and content creators often invest significant time and resources into EEAT strategies that yield little to no improvement in search rankings or engagement.

To effectively harness the power of EEAT, it's crucial to separate fact from fiction. Instead, you need to develop an approach that takes into account both the technical and human aspects of establishing expertise, authority, and trust.

How EEAT Works

EEAT is part of Google's guidelines for the Search Quality Raters who evaluate websites and search engine results to determine their quality. While it isn't technically a ranking factor, it can help you achieve greater visibility across Google's ecosystem. 

EEAT Defined

Before digging into the finer details of EEAT, it's important to go over the basics. This is what Google Quality Raters look for when reviewing your content: 

• Experience: The content includes first-hand experience from the author or other contributors.

• Expertise: The author has relevant knowledge to write about the topic, as proven by previous publications, professional certifications, education, and other evidence. 

• Authoritativeness: The content comes from a reputable source in the industry and also has support from other credible sources. 

• Trust: Content is accurate, honest, safe, reliable, and up-to-date, with no misinformation or intentional deception. 

Keep in mind that trust is by far the most important factor for EEAT. If you fail to meet the Google search quality requirements for trust, such as by sharing information that you know is false, it doesn't matter whether your content has experience, expertise, or authority.

Also, while EEAT might play a smaller role for less sensitive topics, it's critical when it comes to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics, such as health, finance, and news. If your company generates content related to any of these subjects, EEAT could have a major impact on your SEO. 

The Knowledge Graph

Once you know what Google is looking for in your content and authors, the next question is how it goes about evaluating them. To determine whether an author has experience and expertise, Google tries to understand their credentials, background, and online presence.

For each piece of content, Google's algorithms analyse the author's qualifications by looking at signals like: 

• Author bios and background information showcasing their qualifications 

• Links to other reputable sites or sources that reference the author

• The author's overall online presence and reputation

• Co-occurrences of the author's name with relevant topics 

Individuals with a strong online presence can gain a place in the Knowledge Graph, an enormous knowledge base that Google uses to store information about entities. The Knowledge Graph enables Google to assess whether an entity is relevant to a particular topic. 

If the author is included in the Knowledge Graph, Google will use this information to build a Knowledge Panel that appears at the top of the results page for related search terms. The Knowledge Panel represents what Google understands about the author and includes images, key facts, and links to related content. 

As such, an author's Knowledge Panel is crucial to establishing their EEAT. 

Why Author EEAT Matters

So, author credentials matter. With AI creating a content overflow, Google doesn't want to waste time crawling and indexing low-quality pages. Author EEAT helps them determine whether they should dedicate resources to particular crawling content.  

In simpler terms, Google wants to provide searchers with information from authors who show real expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness for the subjects they discuss. 

It’s worth bearing in mind that this is also what your buyers want.

Basing your content strategy on expertise builds positive brand perception. When prospects are deep in the research process, evidence of why you’re qualified to advise them can strengthen their opinion of the overall quality and authority of your content. This generates greater trust in your brand and encourages further exploration of your offerings. 

Common Problems with Author EEAT

Because EEAT has become so important, many brands have put a heavy focus on establishing the expertise and experience of their authors. 

However, it's hard for brands to manufacture author-level EEAT. The system is deliberately designed to make it hard to game and so trying to build authority solely as a search tactic is likely unrealistic. Here's why many approaches fall short. 

1. Relying Solely on Author EEAT

One common misconception is that author EEAT alone is enough to support your authority. 

It’s not.

Author EEAT operates within a broader context of both website and content. Publishing an author with strong EEAT will not be enough to overcome a website with a poor rating for reliability or quality standards.

Google also evaluates websites’ expertise and authority on the specific topic of the content. So a site that primarily covers sports, for example, might have low EEAT for publishing medical advice. This holds true, even if it is publishing an article about sports injuries written by a respected sports physiotherapist.

2. Ignoring the Google Knowledge Graph

Author EEAT also operates within the context of the Google Knowledge Graph.

As we’ve seen, Knowledge Panels provide detailed information about entities like companies, people, and topics directly in the search results.

Complete and detailed panels are an important factor that B2B marketers should pay attention to when building EEAT. An author with an insufficient—or nonexistent—Knowledge Panel doesn’t exist in Google’s Knowledge Graph and therefore won't help build your site's EEAT. 

3. Choosing the Wrong Authors

When it comes down to it, an author's EEAT depends on that individual's online presence, commitment, talent, and effort. If your authors fall short in any one of those areas, that makes it much more difficult to establish their expertise in Google’s eyes.

An author won’t contribute much to your EEAT they don’t have a platform. That means prioritising working with subject matter experts who maintain a professional website, publish in the industry press or speak at conferences, or whose social media presence is active and related to their profession.

4. Using Ineffective Author Profiles

Some brands assume that basic author bio pages and social profiles are all that is needed to demonstrate EEAT. Scroll through a few pieces of content on any given topic and you're likely to discover at least one website that includes a brief author profile at the bottom of the page. 

These profile boxes often include nothing more than the author's name, a sentence or two describing their background, and a headshot or avatar. While this covers the basics of who the author is, it fails to provide any corroborating evidence of genuine subject expertise. As a result, it does little to support the author's or the brand's EEAT.

5. Neglecting On-Page Technical Requirements 

The next place companies might be falling short is in overlooking the importance of technical on-page elements. These help to establish information and connections for the entities involved in producing the content.

Structured data markup, for example, provides semantic and contextual information about the content on your web pages to search engines. It also helps Google better understand the entities associated with your content, potentially leading to inclusion in knowledge graphs and enhanced visibility in search features like knowledge panels. The Person schema, for example, provides a structured way to describe authors in a machine-readable format for search engines. 

Similarly, HTML metadata is important. Just as a title tag indicates the name of a web page, an author tag identifies who created the content on that page. Including this small bit of code gives Google more detailed and accurate information that helps to reinforce your EEAT.

Solutions to EEAT Challenges

Although EEAT isn't as straightforward as some SEO specialists would like to believe, that doesn't mean it's a lost cause. With the right strategy, you can develop stronger author EEAT and improve your quality ratings under Google's guidelines.

In addition to addressing any deficiencies in your on page optimisation and giving your author profiles a boost, here are some longer term solutions to meeting Google's requirements.

Partner with Experts

When it comes to content creators, brands often focus on internal thought leaders. This allows them to encourage individual growth and provide opportunities to showcase their expertise. Taking this approach can be effective for many reasons, but it will only impact EEAT if the authors' have cultivated their online profile and have plenty of off-site evidence that clearly communicates their authority.

Partnering with external subject matter experts is another option, but again it’s not guaranteed to improve your EEAT if they don’t have a platform. Being an influencer is a unique skill that's quite separate from expertise. Likewise, featuring an author purely because of their massive social media following won't boost your EEAT if their content isn’t topically relevant, recent, and engaging followers. 

When appropriate, consider recruiting for and buying in expertise. Look for people with extensive experience, certifications, and a history of publishing or speaking. If you search for their name on Google and they have a Knowledge Panel, so much the better. These people have pre-established authority, credibility, and expertise that can contribute to your site's EEAT, so you can focus on curating their credentials rather than starting from scratch.

Linking to an author's external biography from their byline is an easy way to demonstrate their qualifications, particularly if the page includes: 

• Professional name and title 

• Headshot

• Link for social profiles and personal website

• Topical credentials, such as industry activities, certifications, and awards

• Explanation of why this person is well-qualified to discuss the topic at hand

Make Sure There's Ample Evidence

No matter how trustworthy your organisation might be, Google won't just take your word for it when you say an author has expertise.

Google will look at other signals and links to confirm that this information is accurate and that you're not just fabricating author credentials to build your EEAT. For example, they'll consider whether other publications or sites have linked to the author's personal page or their content on your site.

 Their algorithms will look at a number of external factors to corroborate EEAT, including: 

• Author profiles from other third-party publications 

• Press coverage

• Directory listings

• Podcast participation

• Speaker profiles from events

• Books 

• Awards, associations, or accreditations 

• Wikipedia mentions or dedicated pages

While you can't control whether an author has all of these elements available for Google to evaluate, you can seek out experts that have them. You can also encourage those that don't to take steps to improve their online presence and highlight their expertise.

Build Better Knowledge Panels

The Knowledge Graph is a vital piece of the EEAT puzzle. If an author already has a Knowledge Panel, they need to make sure that it fully represents their expertise by claiming and verifying it. 

For authors who aren't blessed by Google, they can take steps to work towards gaining a toehold in the Knowledge Graph—and a coveted Knowledge Panel—but it takes time.

As with planting trees, the best time to have started cultivating your online presence was ten years ago. The second best time is to start today.

It won't pay immediate dividends, but it can't hurt to nurture talent and encourage them to build their personal brand. Get them to build that professional website, write a detailed About page, and publish their thoughts on the industry. Support them in building up a network of credible-third-party mentions from publishers and podcasters and conferences, and create a web of authoritative links with them at the centre.

Partner Your Experts with Expert Writers

If you struggle to find subject matter experts who have the time to dedicate to content creation, try forming a partnership between them and SEO content writers. 

The right relationship between a writing team and influential experts can create content that harnesses their expertise without tying them to the keyboard. With the expert's approval, you can then publish the content under their name, leveraging their built-in EEAT to benefit your site. 

Get to the Heart of EEAT

There may not be a direct line between an author's EEAT and your search ranking, but it's still key to your on-page SEO strategy. Google uses author EEAT to evaluate the quality of your content, which ultimately affects whether it shows up when a user conducts a relevant search. 

Understanding the nuances of EEAT isn't always easy, especially when you're also focused on other things that affect your SEO, including user experience, page speeds, and link building. Fortunately, you don't have to find the answers on your own. Reach out to 1827 Marketing to get support with all your marketing needs, from enhancing paid search to demystifying EEAT.